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Friday, 7 July 2017

The Bioshock Infinite that Could Have Been

As readers of this weblog may have been able to glean by now, I have a bit of an obsession with Bioshock Infinite. Without reservation I can say that it is one of the finest video games I have ever played, transcending simple enjoyment of gaming itself to engage with a compelling story and setting. It ranks easily within my Top-10 of the whole genre of Retro-Victorian Scientific Romances, maybe even within my Top-5, for how it blends the human drama of guilt and redemption with a neat Sci-Fi premise with social commentary on conservatism and radicalism with an extremely well-researched and well-executed Victorian-Edwardian setting both aesthetically and historically rich.

For as fantastic as it is, Infinite is not flawless. Matt Lees of VideoGamerTV raised a very salient critique about how underused the premise of multiple realities truly is: "Why is it that the only thing Elizabeth ever really pulls in from another universe are gun turrets, and cover, and hooks? In an infinite universe of infinite possibilities, most people just end up building loads of freight hooks." The complexities of translating blue sky ideas into a functioning game can excuse Ken Levine and his team for a great deal. Concept art and early game demos provide us with a glimpse of what, in a parallel universe, could have been an even more ambitious game.

In the first demo reel released in 2010, we see a Columbia that is in a slow and creepy sort of decline, with realities rippling in and out. When Booker meets the politician Saltonstall (who is preaching to an empty rally), he begins to phase between his ultra-American self in this universe and an alternate, Communist version. It also shows a great deal more interplay between Booker and Elizabeth, tagging up to take down opponents, and a more logical form of the skyhook, as opposed to the all-purpose transportation/murder weapon it became in the finished game.

A second demo reel released a year later at the E3 show is closer to the finished game, with dialogue and animation used in it, though it hasn't exactly settled on the story. It shows what would have been an interesting cut scene for demonstrating Elizabeth's growing ability to manipulate tears and a greater sense that there is a story going on to which Booker is a witness as much as a participant. Levine's team originally promised more variety and self-direction in the game, giving players greater choice in whether to engage in conflicts, escape, and how to fight. One of the things that Elizabeth could have materialized is an escape door. Booker is given the option of stopping a Vox Populi execution, though we can't know if choosing not to interfere would have been as irrelevant as who you choose to wing a baseball at in Infinite's annual raffle.

The book Art of Bioshock Infinite, published by Dark Horse, is a fantastic resource for exploring the creative process of a video game as well as catching glimpses of the Infinite that could have been. It is chock-full of designs, but the following are a few of my favourites that I wish had made it into the finished game. First are the "Automatic Gentlemen," otherwise known as the robot butlers promised to us by the futuristic prophesies of any age...

The following Automatic Gentleman concept is a direct riff on the Big Daddy/Little Sister relationship of the original Bioshock game...

The "Heavy Hitter" enemies went through many different iterations. The Handymen in the game are great, but this walking electrical dynamo would have been interesting too...

Beyond a "Heavy Hitter" is the Songbird, who is less of an enemy (since you never actually fight him) and more of a character in his own right. I'm not overly fond of the finished design, much preferring this speculative design, which looks like a piece of monumental architecture come to life. Perhaps that is why they didn't use it: as an automated statue, it may have lacked the emotive quality they wanted to evoke...

Before the Songbird, one option for a flying Heavy Hitter that the team behind the game explored was a Mothman. Unfortunately it was probably too on-the-nose as a flying Big Daddy...

Another of reasonable critique made of Bioshock Infinite is that the "Vigors" don't feel like an organic part of the world. In the first Bioshock, these "Plasmids" rewrote DNA and had a key place in the story, being responsible for the downfall of the underwater city of Rapture, as well as tying together the theme of unrestricted power. Even the game's name derived from them. In Infinite, they are literally magic potions. One of the original devices conceived for injecting Vigors better echoes the Plasmids of Bioshock, while the Vigor Junkies show the effects of Vigor addiction only hinted at in the finished game.

Replicating the harsh realities of Victorian workers' slums, designers passed on some of their original concepts for a Transhumanist nightmare in which workers were amputated, mutilated, and grafted into the very machines they worked on...

Had they used more of their original concepts, these workers would have been the least horrific thing that the game's designers forced on us. Bioshock was notable for its philosophical content, deconstructing Libertarian utopias and Ayn Rand's philosophy, but it was ultimately a horror game. The player descended to the underwater city and was thrown into a post-apocalyptic scenario with ravenous zombie-like creatures. It appears that Bioshock Infinite was slated for a similar treatment, as evidenced by concepts like this little girl, forced to wear a cage because she has taken a liking to human flesh. When freed to satiate her hunger, she grows into a monstrosity...

Alternately there are the poor victims of the tears that spread across Columbia. Through exposure, they begin to graft together with different instances of themselves in different universes or at different times in their lives, like the old man here, grafted with his infant self...

Heirs of these concepts exist in the game that was ultimately delivered to shelves. Cornelius Slate does exhibit the signs of addiction to the Shock Jockey Vigor, growing crystals from his skull and hands. Junkies come up in their fuller form in the Burial At Sea DLC. People who died in one reality begin to phase in and out of state in another. The horror elements truly come out in the final raid on Comstock House, which is a dilapidated asylum in a terrifying possible future, and the Boys of Silence who occupy it are freaky enough. Nevertheless, Bioshock Infinite opts not to concentrate on either the Vigors or the effects of the interdimensional tears, focusing instead on its political and religious themes.

Bioshock Infinite's finished form is a marvelous game and one of my favourite examples of the whole genre of retro-Victorian Science Fiction. This look at what could have been is only to shake my fist at the limitations of the medium to realize what may have originally been intended as an even more ambitious game.

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